Tag Archives: Using Microsoft One Note in college classes

Ever been in a class where the teacher talks extremely fast, there is way too much information on one PowerPoint slide and there never seems to be enough time to write down everything that is said? There just so happens to be a couple different options when it comes to taking notes.

First off, keep trying to write as fast and illegibly as possible. Secondly you could take a laptop to class and take notes on Microsoft Word. Or finally, take a laptop and use Microsoft’s OneNote.

Microsoft’s OneNote is specifically designed for note taking, whether it’s in the classroom or boardroom. How OneNote works is first a user creates a “Notebook” such as “Spring 2011,” then can add tabs for each individual class or meeting. After that, templates can be used such as “College Note Taking” which automatically sets up an easy to follow outline. Now of course there are no speed daemons out there when it comes to typing, that will take time to conquer. OneNote has many features that come in handy, such as automatic saving, after adding just one word, instantly you can close out and open right back up where you left off—making the possibility of losing a document from lack of saving, almost impossible. Also, typing is much faster than the traditional “by hand” method. Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2010 is available for free download from uwyo.edu/SOFTWARE. After messing around with OneNote for only a few minutes, anyone can become a regular user with little to no problems.

Give it a try and see how much easier note taking has become. If you’d like a quick tutorial please see below. (We will link back to this post on our FAQ page if you ever need to come back and reference this how-to.)

To create a new Notebook, follow these steps:
File -> New -> New Notebook